New perspectives on the gender pay gap: trends and drivers

Published:27 Jun 2016

ISBN:

9781786523280

This report explains the different measures of the gender pay gap and considers how it has been changing over time. It also considers underlying drivers and describes Scottish Government policy intended to help encourage the decline of the pay gap.

6. Comparison of the Different Ways of Presenting the Pay
Gaps

No one measure is appropriate as a single measure of such a
complex issue as the gender pay gap. All pay gaps have fundamental
differences and limitations relating to their composition and what
exactly they represent - there is no ideal option. Public
presentations of the pay gap tend to focus on:

1. single headline pay gap figures which do not reveal the
particular barriers faced by specific age groups, sectors and
occupations and how they are changing

2. the changes from year to year, rather than the longer term
trend.

The full-time pay gap is the most commonly cited
pay gap and is based on full-time employees only, not including
self‑employed. The rationale for focusing on this is to
remove any 'distortion' from women being more likely to work
part‑time, and the association of part‑time work with
lower pay.

But this does not recognise that more women work part‑time
in response to greater caring responsibilities and wider barriers
to economic progress. These women are not represented in the
full-time pay gap.

The overall pay gap includes all full and
part-time workers. On the one hand, this does not allow direct
comparison of the wages of men and women working full-time. On the
other hand, it does capture the effect of factors which result in
the channelling of women into part-time work.

The overall pay gap is higher than the full-time gap
because:

A higher proportion of women work part-time - around 41%
compared with only 11% of men
[12].

Part-time workers of both genders earn less, on average, per
hour than full-time workers.

The full-time pay gap removes any influence of different working
patterns - in general, part-time work is lower paid per hour. It is
arguably, therefore, a better measure for comparison on a
like-for-like basis. However, it does not capture wider influences
on women's hourly wages. For example, women are more likely to seek
part-time work which may be made partly in response to wider
societal and economic barriers
[13].

The overall pay gap captures the effects of all of these
barriers but also any 'residual' imbalance between men and women's
working patterns relating to preferences rather than barriers.

The part-time pay gap compares only part-time
workers. This shows that part-time women have higher part-time
wages than part-time men and the pay gap was -7.2% in 2014 in
Scotland. However, there are considerable compositional effects due
to part‑time workers being predominantly women. A higher
proportion of employees working part-time are women (77%) than men
(23%)
[14]. Those who work part-time earn less on average than those
who work full-time.

Different organisations also emphasise alternative variations of
the pay gap based on whether they prefer the median or mean
[15]. The
mean pay gap is much more sensitive to very high
incomes and is consistently higher than the median. The Scottish
Government (and the
ONS)
emphasises the
median pay gap because it is likely to be a better
representation of gap in the middle of the earnings distribution.
Others emphasise the
mean pay gap because it takes into account gender
inequalities at the very top of the income distribution.

KEY MESSAGE: the median full-time pay gap is likely to
remain the official
ONS
measure but it is helpful to consider the overall pay gap when
discussing wider barriers to economic participation.